Lavender in the Sanctuary: Vocations, Vice, and the Need for Truth
A crisis of credibility
“The homosexual infiltration of the Vatican is not anecdote but architecture,” writes Chris Jackson, arguing that “promotion follows the lavender path. Advancement depends not on orthodoxy or even on competence, but on being ‘in the parish.’ A discreet double life means fraternity and protection. Exposure means exile.”¹ His contention is stark: secrecy and vice have become systems of governance.
Gene Thomas Gomulka, himself a former seminary instructor and diocesan official, presents case histories showing how this culture damages vocations. One man, “Bob,” was groomed by a priest in minor seminary: “While Bob entered formation because he felt he had a vocation, his motivation to be ordained stemmed from being able, as a perceived ‘celibate’ priest, to live in the closet and keep his ‘secret’ from family and friends.”² Others, like the promising seminarian Anthony Gorgia, were driven out when they reported misconduct: “Anthony’s dreams of being a priest were crushed when he was coerced into leaving formation… after he witnessed the seminary vice rector, Father Adam Park, preying on fellow seminarians.”³
These testimonies converge with Jackson’s warning: “The omertà is the operating system of the Vatican.”⁴ Whether in Rome or in American dioceses, the same silence protects the guilty and punishes the honest.
Inclination and behaviour
Yet one point of distinction must be made. Jackson contends that “entire seminaries in the 1960s and 70s became dominated by homosexual cliques,” and Gomulka lists numerous clergy publicly disgraced in “Grindr” scandals.⁵ But it does not follow that homosexual inclination itself is the cause of abuse. The John Jay Report showed that the majority of abuse victims were male, but it did not equate same-sex attraction with inevitable misconduct.⁶ The Catechism is clear: “The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition… These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition” (CCC §2358).
The Fathers of the Church also distinguish between temptation and sin. St. Augustine preached: “It is not the temptation but the consent which is the sin.”⁷ To conflate orientation with unchastity is as false as to accuse every heterosexual priest of womanising. The real scandal is not attraction but duplicity—those who vow celibacy yet live double lives, and the bishops who defend them.
The dossier and the silence
Both writers recall Benedict XVI’s 2012 secret report. Jackson notes: “Phil Lawler reminds us that Benedict XVI commissioned a secret report in 2012 on the rot inside the Curia… documented not only corruption and financial scheming, but also the network of homosexual power at the Vatican’s highest levels.”⁸ Francis himself later admitted receiving from Benedict “a box of files filled with the most difficult and painful situations.”⁹ Yet he has acted little upon them. The prophet’s rebuke applies: “His watchmen are blind, all ignorant; dumb dogs not able to bark” (Is. 56:10).
The remnant Church
Jackson concludes with a sober lesson: “The next conclave will not be a conclave of Athanasiuses but of courtiers raised in this very system… What remains is what has always remained: the remnant. The ordinary faithful, clinging to the sacraments where they are valid, the Mass where it is preserved, the catechism where it is remembered.”¹⁰ Gomulka reaches a similar conclusion from the opposite angle: the homosexualisation of seminaries has created “retention and recruitment problems, which have resulted in good, holy, straight seminarians and priests… leaving formation or ministry, requesting to study in another seminary, or being unjustly laicized, often as whistleblowers.”¹¹
A true diagnosis
The enemy, then, is not temptation but duplicity. The Church is wounded not by men who bear heavy crosses faithfully, but by those who live in hypocrisy. As Gomulka’s testimony shows, seminarians who attempted to report misconduct were often driven out, while those who concealed their double lives advanced.¹¹ In such an environment, it is the virtue of honesty—not orientation—that becomes the true dividing line.
St. Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Rule warned that “he who is not a model of good living must never become a pastor of souls.” Where this principle is ignored, the priesthood becomes not a sacrificial offering but a mask for personal vice. It is not inclination alone that destroys vocations, but the tolerance of untruth.
The Fathers recognised the constant battle between flesh and spirit. St. Paul, confessing his own struggle, wrote: “For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do” (Rom. 7:19). This realism is the key to pastoral discernment: temptation is universal, but fidelity is possible by grace. The problem is not that priests face sexual temptation, but that too many are taught—by silence or by example—that duplicity is survivable, even rewarded. In this sense, the “lavender mafia” is not merely a description of sexual cliques, but of a wider culture of dishonesty and complicity that corrodes both heterosexual and homosexual vocations alike.
Pope St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), described the core error of modernism as a “perversion of mind” that preferred subjectivism to truth (n. 39). The modern crisis of celibacy has the same root: the refusal to acknowledge truth, whether about human weakness or about divine grace. The scandal is not temptation but its institutional concealment, which breeds corruption and weakens faith in the supernatural.
Conclusion: the path forward
The way forward is clarity and courage. Clarity to distinguish between inclination and sin, temptation and betrayal. Courage to expose cover-up and defend truth, even when it implicates those in scarlet and purple. Without such clarity, the Church will continue to misdiagnose the crisis: chasing statistics about orientation rather than confronting the deeper vice of hypocrisy. Without such courage, the cycle of secrecy will continue: promising reports shelved, dossiers unopened, and predators shielded.
What is needed is a renewal of celibate fatherhood, lived with integrity. Priests must once again be spiritual fathers, men who, like St. John Vianney, offer their entire lives for their people with no hidden corners. Bishops must once again be shepherds who guard their flocks against wolves, even when the wolves wear mitres. And the laity must once again demand holiness rather than spin, truth rather than slogans.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), reminded the Church that the Kingship of Christ cannot be realised “if once men neglect and reject the authority of Christ… they are necessarily left without a sure and stable foundation” (n. 18). The scandals of clerical duplicity flow from precisely this rejection of Christ’s authority in favour of worldly calculation. The renewal of the priesthood will only come when Christ reigns once more in hearts, in seminaries, and in the governance of the Church.
Pius XII in Sacra Virginitas (1954) insisted that consecrated celibacy is “not a mere human law… but rises to the dignity of a divine gift” (n. 14). To treat it as a cover for duplicity is not only a betrayal of the priestly office but a sacrilege against a divine gift. The only proper response is what he called a “chaste vigilance” (n. 55): firm discipline, clear teaching, and support for those who struggle to live the evangelical counsel of chastity faithfully.
Jackson warns that “Rome’s rainbow will not be the final word.”¹² Indeed, the final word belongs to Christ, who promised that His Church will endure. Yet endurance is not automatic. The Mystical Body, wounded by sin, requires purification. That purification will not come from bureaucratic reform alone, but from fidelity—men and women who refuse compromise and cling to the truth.
History proves that the remnant has always carried the torch when shepherds failed. St. Athanasius defied emperors and councils to preserve the true faith against Arianism. St. Catherine of Siena rebuked popes themselves for their weakness and summoned them to reform. In every age, sanctity was restored not by committees but by saints.
Today, as Gomulka notes, good men are still being driven from seminaries by corruption, while others remain faithful in the face of trials.¹¹ They are the seeds of renewal, provided the faithful recognise them and support them. If the hierarchy persists in silence, the task of witness will fall ever more heavily upon the remnant. But this has always been the way of the Church: the small and faithful deeds of ordinary Catholics, lived in truth, overcoming the power of falsehood.
In the words of St. Paul to the Philippians, “Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That you may be blameless and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:14–15). That is the vocation of priests and laity alike: to shine as lights in a crooked generation.
Rome’s rainbow, as Jackson insists, will not be the final word. The final word will be Christ, Truth Himself, before whom every lie is exposed and every secret revealed. The question is whether His Church will meet Him clothed in fidelity, or stripped by scandal.
A pastoral exhortation to the Old Roman faithful
Beloved sons and daughters, the weight of these revelations is heavy, yet they must not crush our hope. We were not promised an immaculate hierarchy, but we were promised an indefectible Church. The Cross has always been the form of her life, and it is the Cross that purifies her members.
To my brother priests: live celibacy in truth. The world mocks it, some bishops betray it, but the Lord honours it. Your strength is not in secrecy but in sacrificial charity, visible to your flock. Guard the altar as men who will give account to Christ Himself.
To our seminarians and young men discerning: do not be afraid. The Lord who calls equips. Do not be seduced by the world’s lies, nor disheartened by clerical scandals. If you are faithful to prayer, to discipline, to the sacramental life, your vocation will be a light in the darkness.
To the laity: demand holiness. Hold us accountable as priests and bishops. Insist on reverence in worship and truth in teaching. Support your good pastors, and withdraw support from those who live dishonestly. Your fidelity in families, in workplaces, and in public life is the seedbed of Christian restoration.
Remember: the Kingship of Christ, so powerfully proclaimed in Quas Primas, begins in the heart and extends outward. If He reigns in us, then no corruption in Rome can overthrow His reign in the world. “Veritas lucet”—the truth shines—and it shines most brightly in the lives of those who, amid a crooked generation, refuse compromise.
¹ Chris Jackson, “Lavender in the Sanctuary: The Vatican’s Closet Is No Longer Closed,” Hiraeth in Exile, August 19, 2025.
² Gene Thomas Gomulka, “Why Men Become Priests,” John 18:37 Substack, August 17, 2025.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Jackson, Lavender in the Sanctuary.
⁵ Jackson, Lavender in the Sanctuary; Gomulka, Why Men Become Priests.
⁶ The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950–2002 (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2004), pp. 68–73.
⁷ Augustine, Sermon 151.
⁸ Jackson, Lavender in the Sanctuary.
⁹ Pope Francis, Life: My Story Through History (HarperOne, 2025).
¹⁰ Jackson, Lavender in the Sanctuary.
¹¹ Gomulka, Why Men Become Priests.
¹² Jackson, Lavender in the Sanctuary.
Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), n. 39.
Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925), n. 18.
Pius XII, Sacra Virginitas (1954), nn. 14, 55.
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